Antiker Römer Terracotta Mehrdüsen-Öllampe in der Form eines Tisches mit Ciambella - 91 mm

Multi-Nozzle Roman Terracotta Oil Lamp in the Shape of a Table with Ring Breads

Culture / Period: Ancient Roman
Date / Period: 2nd century A.D.
Material: Terra cotta
Dimensions: 82 x 91 x 57 mm
Condition: Good condition, repaired

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Provenance information:
Object Registration ID: 11

According to the current owner, this piece was purchased from a private collector, N.N., in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
The previous owner, a private collector, N.N., from Nijmegen, stated that the object had been in his collection since an unknown date.
According to the previous owner, the lamp had previously been in a private collection in the Netherlands since the 1960s/1970s.
No further information concerning the earlier ownership history of the object was available from the previous owner.

Background Information:
This unusual Roman terracotta oil lamp is modelled in the form of a small table, or mensa, a shape that immediately links the object to themes of domestic life, food presentation, and ritual display in the Roman world. The upper surface, arranged around the filling hole, is decorated with several ring-shaped breads, while the underside incorporates five separate nozzles for wicks. This combination of form and function makes it a particularly evocative example of Roman ceramic design, in which utilitarian lighting devices could also carry symbolic and visual meaning.

Roman oil lamps were essential objects in everyday life, used in homes, workshops, shrines, and banquet settings throughout the Empire. They provided artificial light after sunset and were made in a wide variety of forms, from simple wheel-made examples to carefully moulded pieces with figural or symbolic decoration. Multi-nozzle lamps such as this one were designed to produce a stronger light output than ordinary single-nozzle lamps, making them suitable for more elaborate domestic interiors, dining spaces, or settings with a ceremonial character.

The ring-shaped breads shown on the upper surface are best understood as representations of Roman ring breads rather than in any modern culinary sense. Such breads were made from wheat or spelt flour and shaped by hand, sometimes as rings or wreath-like forms. In the Roman world, bread was not only a staple of daily nourishment but could also carry social and religious associations. It played a role in household offerings, festive meals, and ritual contexts, and depictions of bread could therefore suggest abundance, hospitality, and the ordered provision of food within both domestic and sacred space.

The table-shaped design of the lamp appears to reinforce this association. By combining imagery of bread with a lighting device, the object brings together several important elements of Roman life: light, meal, offering, and display. This reflects the close connection between practical household activities and religious or symbolic meaning in Roman culture, where the dining table and the household shrine could both serve as places of social and ritual importance.

Terracotta lamps of this kind were produced within an organised ceramic tradition that supplied the Roman world with mould-made domestic wares on a very large scale. Workshops developed regional styles while also participating in broader shared forms and iconographies across the Empire. Such objects circulated widely through trade and local markets, reaching both urban and provincial contexts. Their survival today illustrates the extent to which Roman daily life was supported by standardised yet often visually inventive ceramic production.

Dated to the 2nd century A.D., this lamp belongs to the Roman Imperial period, a time when domestic comfort, dining culture, and household religious practice were deeply embedded in everyday life. As an object that combines illumination with imagery connected to food and offering, it offers valuable insight into how Romans understood the relationship between sustenance, ritual, and the shared environment of the home. It forms a tangible connection to the ancient world, in which objects of this kind played a practical role in daily use while also conveying wider cultural meaning.